New Cassel is a community in the middle of Nassau County that has a diverse history but doesn’t have the same name recognition as other nearby areas.
New Cassel doesn’t have its own school district, library, water district or post office. It isn’t incorporated into a village but is categorized as a hamlet within the Town of North Hempstead. The community only encompasses 1.5 square miles. Meanwhile, New Cassel has a population of roughly 14,000 people and offers the intersection of diversity and business as it thrives on accessibility.
North Hempstead Town Councilman Robert Troiano represents the area and is a native of Westbury. He said Westbury and New Cassel have a closely connected history and that many people from the New Cassel area say they are from Westbury.
“Westbury and New Cassel are very closely linked,” he said. “I think something that separates New Cassel a bit is that it has been the home to waves of immigrants coming from all parts of the world since its inception in the 1700s.”
New Cassel was founded by formerly enslaved people who were freed and later became a landing spot for many different nationalities of European settlers.
By the 1950s, African Americans moving away from the American South settled in New Cassel. Immigrants from several Latin American countries also immigrated to the community throughout the 20th century.
Troiano said today the community is home to a wide variety of cultures with a heavy Latin American influence.
“If you enjoy walking down the street and smelling and hearing different cultures, then New Cassel can be appealing,” he said.
Troiano said the development in the area began in the 1950s and has been aided by the roads that lead to New Cassel and Westbury. The Wantagh State Parkway intersects the hamlet on its eastern side. At the northernmost part of New Cassel, there is an exit on the Northern State Parkway, and I-495 can be accessed less than a mile away.
Old Country Road marks New Cassel’s southern border and has a wide variety of restaurants, shops and businesses. Grand Boulevard, Prospect Avenue and Brush Hollow Road all serve as main streets in the area as well.
“That leads the Westbury and New Cassel communities as a central location, a spring point for going almost anywhere in Long Island, north, south, east and west to the city,” Troiano said. “I think it’s an advantage over a lot of other communities.”
Homeowners in New Cassel have also benefited from a reduction in property taxes.
Over the last five years, the Westbury School District’s Board of Education, of which Troiano is also the president, has reduced its tax levy by 5%.
“Because our taxpayers bore the burden of having to pay more in taxes during the years when the state did not live up to its promise, we felt it right to share with them the increase in state aid that we were getting, and so we consciously returned a third of the increase we’ve received, back to to taxpayers,” he said.
Since the start of the 21st century, the Town of North Hempstead has also invested in New Cassel as part of its New Cassel Visioning project.
Despite the close proximity to businesses, restaurants and attractions, and the freeze on property taxes, Troinao said the main thing about looking at the New Cassel area is acceptance.
“I do think what would attract people to New Cassel is that they know they’ll be accepted into the community, and if you appreciate diversity, you have that in spades in New Cassel,” he said.
